


Building from Scrap

by ineptshieldmaid, Trojie



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Dissociation, Explicit Consent, F/M, Kink Negotiation, Light BDSM, Multi, Poe Dameron hurts so pretty, Restraints, Threesome - F/M/M, Trauma, podracing as metaphor, solving sexual problems through creative use of threesomes, stormtrooper sexual mores, unfortunately explicit consent does not guarantee happy and healthy sex for all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-28
Updated: 2016-03-28
Packaged: 2018-05-29 16:16:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6383593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineptshieldmaid/pseuds/ineptshieldmaid, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trojie/pseuds/Trojie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Rey and Poe have some spectacular incompatibilities of kink, compounded by their respective coping or not-coping strategies vis-a-vis traumatic encounters with violent Force users; in which Finn is much sought-after as a sexual collaborator on base, but is baffled by Rey and Poe's crises; and in which constructive solutions are eventually found.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Building from Scrap

**Author's Note:**

> Inept's cautious content notes: look, this is partly a story about trauma and anxiety as well as about spectacular incompatibilites of kink. Everyone involved is trying their hardest to communicate clearly and consent explicitly, but that doesn't make it a happy and healthy situation. There is angst. There are trauma-responses explicitly tied up in the sex. We think this makes it interesting. Your mileage may vary. (Also, yeah, I once promised note age differences: we've got one. Poe is at least *aware* of it.)

Holding hands did nothing but get you in trouble. Sometimes exhilarating trouble, like hijacking the Millennium Falcon and escaping Jakku, admittedly, but sometimes…

Not that this wasn't exhilarating. They'd been holding hands, kissing - still a new enough thing with Poe that Rey got a bit lost in trying to experience it, to tuck the feeling away in a memory in case she woke up tomorrow and it wasn't on offer any more - and then the bed had been there, ready, she'd bumped into it with the backs of her calves and Poe still kissing her. Their hands were still clasped as she let herself fall back, and pulled him with her in mischief, just to see the look on his face. 

She knew he liked that she wasn't afraid to reach for what she wanted from him. She knew he liked that she pushed, instead of waiting for him to lead. She liked that he liked it, too. She liked that she could try things with him.

But then their hands were joined above his head on the pillow, and he was underneath her, breathing hard already even though they were both still dressed and they'd barely got started. 

No, wait. Their hands weren't joined. Her fingers were around his wrists and she was bearing down, putting weight as if she wanted to keep him there, as if he didn't want to be there if his own free will. Rey had no idea when that had happened.

She started to pull back, horrified with herself, an apology already forming, because there's being forward and then there's being forceful, and … and no, she won't. Not like that. Not like _he_ would have...

'Can you- ' Poe started to say, and she took her hands off him entirely, because he shouldn't even have had to ask, she should never have even put him in a position like that, even if she had no idea how she'd done it. 

He sat up under her, so she was astride his lap. Through both of their trousers, she could feel that he was still hard. 

'I-' Rey started, and gritted her teeth, trying not to grind down against him. No more pressure. 'I'm sorry, I didn't mean to push you. I don't know how it happened -'

Master Luke had said that sometimes she wouldn't know her own strength, that as she practiced she would get better, that control would come but that she would have to work for it, and she really didn't want to be thinking of Master Luke right now, but better him than Ren, who'd leant over her the way she had just done to Poe, and offered to teach her …

'I was gonna ask you to push a little harder,' Poe said, sounding confused. He looked at her, the lust clearing from his expression and leaving concern. 'Hey, what's up?' he asked. 'You look spooked all of a sudden.'

Rey took a breath, trying to calm her racing heart, and the not-inconsiderable portion of her that just wanted to run. She was supposed to be controlling that impulse, too. 

‘You know I’m into restraints, right?’ Poe said. ‘It’s not something you need to feel _bad_ about, holding me down. Or… more. If you want.’

Self-control failed, and Rey scrambled back, off Poe’s lap and off the bed entirely. ‘I do _not_ want to… whatever you mean by more. What do you think I am?’ 

She was too loud, too forceful: there was hurt in Poe’s eyes. 

‘Well, don’t then,’ he said, sounding flat. 'I just … thought you might want to.'

Why? Why had he thought that? Why would he assume that she would want to hold people down, just because she could? 'I’m a Jedi, not a power-drunk monster,' she spat. 'If you wanted a megalomaniac, maybe Finn should have left you with Kylo Ren.'

* * *

Finn hummed to himself as he thumbed open the door to the room he shared with Rey. He was feeling pleasantly tired, achey in all the right places, and not a little pleased with himself. The Resistance did things differently from the First Order. Lots of things they did _very_ differently, and that could be terrifying at times, but it was pretty gratifying to find that here, he was in some demand as a sexual collaborator. 

At first he’d thought it was because of his sudden status as a Hero of the Resistance - Poe had given him that talk, about how people would want a piece of him and he should let Poe or someone in authority know if anyone in particular was making him uncomfortable. But now, with a few more months perspective, he’d realised that some people here did want to fuck Heroes of the Resistance and admire the most skilled fighters, but other people were more interested in how he looked in the civvies Poe had taken him to buy (good, apparently) and other people thought he had a nice laugh and some people thought he gave good hugs and all of those might be reasons to want to have sex with him.

Frankly, it was amazing.

He was startled out of his post-sex haze by the realisation that the lights were off, but Rey was in their room. Finn had supposed she’d spend the night with Poe - it was pretty rare that Poe’s rosters coincided with Rey’s training and gave them both a rest day at the same time, and Finn knew tomorrow was one of those days. The General had given him the day off, too, and it was in expectation of a lie-in tomorrow that Finn had made plans with Jessika and Whraapu and some friends of theirs he’d only just met, a pair from Dagger Squad’s maintenance crew named Huan and Hashim.

Not only was Rey not in Poe’s quarters, Finn could tell by her posture that she hadn’t come back here to practice meditation - or if she had, she’d given up. When she meditated she sat cross-legged on the floor, still as a powered-down droid, but Finn found her presence sort of warm and comforting all the same. Now, she was sitting pressed up against the wall in the darkest corner of her bunk, arms around her knees, staring at nothing and everything.

For a moment, he froze, unsure of what to do or whether to turn the lights on - but she didn't even look up at him, even though he'd made a hell of a lot of noise, banging into the room because he'd assumed it would be empty, and that decided him. He slid into her bunk until they were both sitting up against the wall. 

'You wanna tell me about it?' he asked. He wasn't a Jedi in training, but he got it, at least enough to sympathise. Training was hard even when it was just rote-learning and marksmanship - throw in the Force as well, and Finn was officially glad that he'd decided to stick with the General rather than join Rey and Master Skywalker. Maybe he’d let Master Skywalker test his Force sensitivity one day, or maybe never. Maybe he’d had enough regimented training to last him a lifetime. 

Whatever exercise Skywalker had had Rey do, it must have been intense, if she cancelled her date with Poe. It took her a few moments to even notice Finn was there, and even then all she did was to curl up towards him. He tentatively put an arm around her shoulder, and tried for cheerfulness. 'Master Luke been working you hard?'

'How do you know if you're hurting someone?' was what he got back, though. 

'They usually let you know, I guess,' Finn replied carefully, thinking about sparring, and then about Jakku and everything that had happened after. 'Rey -'

'What if they ask you to do it?' Rey said dully. 'What if they say they like it, and you don't know when to stop...'

Her voice had raised in pitch, even if it hadn't increased volume, and Finn had a sudden urge to find Poe, check on him. 'Rey, what happened? Where's Poe?'

'In his room, I think,' she said. 'He's fine. I'm fine.' She tried to shrug Finn off.

He lifted his arm, but he had no intention of leaving, and she bore out his hunch by not moving away from his side despite having freed herself of the hug. 'Bantha shit,' he said. 'This isn't 'fine'. And if he asked you for something, then you're not hurting him.'

'But that's what he asked for.’ Rey curled in on herself a little more, not looking at him. ‘He likes… being held down. Maybe tied up. He _likes_ that. He said I could _hit_ him!’

‘Oh!’ Finn said. ‘Are we talking about sex?’

‘Yes we’re talking about sex!’ Rey did raise her voice this time. ‘What did you think I meant, training? I hit people in the gym all the time!’

‘I hold people down in sex all the time,’ Finn offered. ‘Sometimes I hit them, too. It’s cool. I mean, I’ll stop if they want me to, right? Or if one of the others want me to.’

‘One of the… right.’ Rey knew Finn’s sex life took place in groups. She found it weird, and she had freaked right the hell out the first time he’d invited her, right after she and Master Luke got back to D’Qar.

‘How do you know it’s… how do you know _you’re_ safe?’ Rey asked.

‘You gotta know your limits,’ Finn said, thoughtfully. ‘And other people’s. And not just what they _like_ , but what’s coming up. You don’t want to leave someone in pain if they’ve got a long shuttle ride the next day.’ Sometimes, here, his colleagues insisted they’d live with the consequences, and that seemed to be permissible. It hadn’t been, amongst Stormtroopers. You weren’t permitted to engage in sexual recreation that might lead to physical impairment unless you had a half-day rest following. Privately, Finn thought that was a sensible rule, and tried to stick to it.

‘What if you’re… wrong?’

‘Well, that’s why you have a spotter. Usually one of your other sexual collaborators, it doesn’t have to be a formal thing, but it’s always good to know someone else will step in if things get out of hand.’ Finn had served as spotter, a lot, until he got here. People knew he hated to see anyone come to harm, and they didn’t _respect_ that, exactly, but they found it useful. 

‘I don’t _have_ any collaborators,’ Rey reminded him. ‘I don’t _want_ any collaborators! It’s just me and my… my boyfriend. Who wants me to hurt him.’

‘Right,’ Finn said. This did not seem like an optimal arrangement, to him. Boyfriends and girlfriends sounded nice enough, but people here seemed to pick them _without_ thoroughly observing them in sexual recreation. And look where that had got Rey and Poe. ‘Then I dunno. You want advice on the best number of people for a small orgy, I can do that - it’s three or five, by the way, even numbers are weird. But boyfriend stuff, you’re going to have to ask someone else. Probably your actual boyfriend.’

* * *

Part of the reason Poe Dameron was the best pilot in the Resistance was that when he didn't know what to do, he put in time in the flight simulator. 

Dogfight sims were the best. The computer threw everything it had at him, or at least it did now that he'd defeated all of the preprogrammed scenarios, and away went whatever was eating at him, because he was too busy thinking about pitch and yaw, airspeed and ceiling, and the range on a TIE fighter's guns, to worry about things on the ground. 

They must have loaded new difficulty settings or something, though, because after the fight with Rey, Poe climbed into the simulator, pulled on the headset, and was shot down within two minutes. 

He restarted. Shot down in one minute. 

Restarted again. Made it five minutes and then crashed into the side of a massive destroyer because he hadn't noticed it slewing around at its lumbering pace until it was too late to correct his own course. 

He slammed his hands down on the console and stared at the blinking lights. Then he rubbed his eyes. He was tired. That's all. Tired, and frustrated, and he needed to sleep. 

It hadn't even been that much of a request. He'd had partners hold him down before. It was _normal_. Perfectly normal. And he'd liked it for a long time before anyone had ever tied him down against his will. They were separate things, the … the things he liked, and what had happened to him at the hands of the First Order. 

_Yeah. You keep telling yourself that, Dameron,_ said the little voice at the back of his head. 

Rey's hands on his wrists had felt so good. Soft and warm, except for the rough, hard-work-worn spots on her palms. Not like gauntlets, and definitely not like the restraints on that chair, and Poe would know. Poe could probably have drawn you a diagram of the thing. 

Fuck. He'd just wanted to put things down for a moment, that's all. The Resistance ran on a tight budget of spit and secret government generosity and hope, and it was a delicate time - but it was always a delicate time, Poe always had to be _on_ , the General relied on him ... 

_And you can't let her down again,_ the voice said, sourly. _You spilled state secrets, Dameron. You owe her. You owe all of them._

They don't know what Kylo Ren got out of Poe's head. They will probably never find out. 

++RESTART SESSION?++ The simulator’s text prompts scrolled in front of his eyes.. 

The mess he left behind, though, that was Poe's responsibility to square away. 

He'd just wanted to lose himself in something. In sex, which was as good a place to lose yourself as any, and with someone you trusted, as safe a place as any too. He'd thought Rey, of everyone, would understand. 

++RESTART SESSION?++

He forgot, sometimes, where she came from. She picked up everything so quick, the things she didn't already know at least, and it was easy to treat her like any other member of the resistance. Easy to like her. Easy to want her, and she wanted right back and wasn't shy about saying so. She flew like Poe and she fought _better_ than Poe. Even if that had been all he'd known about her, and they'd met in a bar on some craptastic planet somewhere, he'd have wanted her to bend him over just out of awe and physical attraction.

But when Kylo Ren had had Rey at his mercy she'd thrown off his control and escaped by herself, and Poe wanted - Poe _needed_ \- that power wrapped around him. 

He hadn't even thought of why. Or what she'd think of it. It hadn't occurred -

++LOADING NEW SIMULATION++ declared the simulator. And then ++PILOT 2 HAS JOINED++

His comms crackled to life. 

_Figured you'd be in here,_ said Rey. _Wanna race?_

Poe knew a peace offering when he was handed it.

'With you? Always,' he said.

* * *

Finn thought about saying no. His first thought, after talking to Rey, was that he didn’t know of a kind of sex he wouldn’t say yes to at least once, just to see what it was like. He hadn’t found a kind yet he really disliked, but he’d slept with a few people who had strong negative preferences. You never smacked Jess Pava on the ass, not even lightly, unless you wanted the whole scene to come to a screeching halt while she lectured you, and everyone else, to the tune of ‘if you’re into spanking that’s fine, we can talk about that, but you damn well ask first’. Finn was pretty glad that was Bastian who brought that one down on himself, not Finn.

So that was his first thought, after talking to Rey: that she shouldn’t do anything she didn’t want to do, but Finn had no real experience in that arena himself. He was pretty much up for anything.

Then he thought again, and decided that wasn’t right at all. He said no, and he said no quite a lot. He had turned down plenty of offers, early on: ones that came from individual Resistance members whose purpose he couldn’t quite figure out. He’d figured out that not _all_ one-on-one sexual encounters constituted boyfriend-or-girlfriend type stuff, but he couldn’t really tell how you knew which were which, so he stuck to Poe’s side or surrounded himself with groups. Doing anything - but especially sex or romance things - in privacy was strongly frowned upon in his previous life. Saying no to uncomfortably personal sexual collaborations - relationships? - came easily to him, even though he had been learning that he quite liked being alone, or spending time one-on-one with friends, like Poe or Rey.

One of those groups he stuck to was the gaggle of younger pilots under Poe’s command, and the transition between saying no to everyone and saying yes to quite a lot of people (under specific circumstances) was mostly their doing. There had been an occasion involving rather a lot of alcohol and someone - Jess Pava, of course it was Jessika - had pointed out that Finn was the only person at the table she _hadn’t_ made out with. Finn liked Jess, liked her easy confidence and the way she wasn't intimidated by anyone except maybe the General. And there were a few other people there, no one trying to get him on his own, and evidently _they_ had all kissed Jess too, so when Bastian said ‘You should fix that, Pava,’ and Jess raised her eyebrows at him he’d said ‘Sure, why not?’, and she crawled across the table and kissed him like she’d been wanting to do that all night.

Finn sat back when she let him go, a little giddy, and saw Bastian shifting in his seat like he was aroused but uncertain what he could or should do about it. Finn knew that feeling, and he didn’t think Bastian deserved to be left out. He didn’t really know what people _said_ , in these circumstances, in the Resistance. Probably not _enjoy the view, it’s all you’re getting,_ which is what people usually said to him. 

So he said, ‘Hey,’ and chewed his lip for a second. Bastian’s eyes flicked down to his mouth. ‘Did you, um…?’

‘Hell, _yes_ ,’ Bastian had said, and was kissing Finn before Finn’s brain could catch up. He was gentler and slower than Jess, but he put his hand on the back of Finn’s neck and pulled him close, and Finn really liked that.

‘He’s good at that,’ Finn said, a little breathless, looking over at Jess when Bastian pulled away. Jess was grinning at him. 

‘Yeah, he is,’ she agreed, and her eyes tracked from Bastian to Finn and back again. 

‘Get a room,’ grouched the woman on Finn’s other side. Lila something-or-other. 

‘You’re just jealous,’ Pava said, and pulled Bastian forward to kiss her.

Finn turned to Lila, who did look like she might be envious of Jess or Bastian or both. ‘Um.’ He said. She raised an eyebrow at him. ‘I could kiss you, if you wanted?’ he offered.

For a second, Lila looked as if she might laugh at him, but instead she said ‘okay then,’ and Finn kissed her, too. So that was how Finn had ended up in bed - because apparently the Resistance didn’t have dedicated recreation rooms for this kind of thing - with two X-Wing pilots and an astrogator, the first time. The second time involved different pilots, same astrogator: he and Lila turned out to work well together, pooling their skills to the benefit of all involved. 

By the time he found himself trying to give Rey sex advice, Finn had been to bed with a whole array of Resistance members, from pilots to catering staff via engineers and mechanics. He kept turning down individual offers, though. Jess had invited him to go to bed with her only a few days after they’d had sex with Bastian and Lila. It wasn’t her fault, he made sure to tell her, but the idea of having sex in pairs still seemed weird to him.

Jess held up her hands. ‘Totally casual, no-strings-attached, you know me.’ Which was reassuring: Finn didn’t know what he’d have done if it turned out Jess wanted him to be her _boyfriend_. Still, he shook his head, and she gave him a look like she thought he was a bit weird, but didn’t push the matter any further. And it hadn’t stopped her from suggesting they seduce one of the women from Intelligence Services together, a few days later, so Finn figured that was okay.

Later, much later, with Rey and Poe on his mind, Finn wondered if Jess ever found it hard to _ask_ people. If she’d been a little bit afraid when she asked him. That didn’t seem like Jess, but it probably was true of some of the other people who ask him to sleep with them, or try to make romantic dates with him. He knew, and he knew he can’t do anything about it, that he’d hurt more than a few people’s feelings. No, not just their feelings. Their hopes, perhaps. 

Finn didn’t get to spend the morning of his day off with Rey and Poe, as he’d planned. Rey had gone to find Poe, and, given the situation they were in, it was best Finn left them alone to work it out. He went swimming instead, and, floating on his back in the lagoon nearest the Resistance base, thought more about saying no. About whether he should have said, more clearly, to Rey that she shouldn’t have to do anything she didn’t like and Poe shouldn’t ask her to.

Then he wondered about Poe. Finn could take or leave a lot of sexual things, but from the sounds of it, Poe really wanted Rey to dominate him. That was important to him. Rey had been pretty certain that Poe was just as shaken up, last night, as she was. Had it been hard for him to ask? If Rey told him no, today, no she wasn’t going to try that ever again - and really, she probably should - how much would that hurt Poe?

* * *

The graphics were old and slightly glitchy; there wasn’t much ambient sound; and this was quite definitely not any of the training sims the Resistance had scraped up from the Navy’s cast-offs. Poe took a second to look around: he was in the cockpit of an open-topped repulsorcraft. It had twin external engines, tethered to the body, which he can already tell was going to swing wildly when they started off. 

The pixelated pilot in the next craft waved: that must be Rey. They were hovering over the sandy floor of a wide canyon, and for a wild second he thought Rey had found a simulation set on Jakku ( _why does everyone want to go back to Jakku?_ ), but a tinny voice started speaking in Huttese and he realised. Podracing. This had to be Tatooine.

‘Where the hell did you find this?’ he said, into the simulator’s comms. Ahead, someone dropped a flag; he slammed the throttle and the engines leapt into gear. He had been right: the pod swung wildly behind the engines as they roared out of the starting zone and around the bend. 

‘Master Luke had it with him!’ Rey called back, and he could hear the grin in her voice. ‘Apparently even Jedi Masters get bored of meditating and watching the ocean.’

Poe took a moment to ingest the idea of Luke Skywalker, galactic legend, spending his mystic exile playing podracing sims. It was a mistake: Rey used that moment to pull ahead of him, forcing him to deal with the wake turbulence coming off her craft as they ripped through a field of rocky pinnacles and weird overhangs.

‘Lemme guess, you’re a pro at this already?’ Poe asked. Not only had he never met the sim, but he’d never flown an actual podracer. Plenty of repulsorcraft, of course; this ought to be simple enough, but he didn’t know the route ahead. They tore out of the rock formations and onto a brief stretch of flat - and ahead of them a seemingly impenetrable rock wall. Working on the theory that Rey knew the route, Poe hugged her wake tightly, waiting for a sign that they were going to pull up or diverge.

‘Never run the sim before,’ Rey said. Her voice wobbled just slightly. ‘Was saving it for a special occasion.’

Poe was touched, and then he was alarmed, as Rey picked up speed and he saw where the route was leading: into a narrow canyon in the cliff ahead.

‘I have flown podracers before, though,’ Rey called, dodging expertly around an outcrop in the middle of the canyon. ‘Unkar Plutt used to refurbish them, they bring in tons of money and get busted up nearly as often as they fly.’

‘I wonder why?’ Poe said, drily. He put on a bit of altitude to go over an obstruction rather than around it. The canyon opened out and they streaked across a flat stretch, pods perfectly level with each other.

‘Pretty sure in podracing we’re supposed to try to sabotage each other’s craft,’ Rey said, as they bore down on the canyon again, the opening narrower this time.

‘That,’ Poe said, banking his pod on one side and ramming the throttle to full, edging past Rey’s pod in the tiny space, ‘would require that I _want_ to sabotage you.’

‘Right,’ Rey said, keeping her engines level with his pod, so he couldn't flatten out ahead of her. Poe pushed higher and leveled out just above her instead. ‘I don’t want to sabotage you, either.’

‘Fuck.’ Poe saw the canyon narrow to a tunnel ahead. He was flying high: he couldn’t angle down without fouling himself on Rey’s power couplings. He banked again, and Rey banked to avoid him, and they entered the tunnel neck-and-neck and on their sides.

‘Push you a bit, maybe,’ Rey said, sounding smug, and she peeled off to pass to the right of a stalactite as he went left.

‘Wouldn’t have it any other way.’ 

Rey beat him out of the tunnel, but as they soared around a sharp turn, artificial rifle fire sounded; Rey took a hit, and in the moments it took for her to right herself again, Poe edged past her. 

‘Tuskens,’ Rey called. ‘Luke warned me!’ 

‘What’re they doing in a simulation game?’ The next stretch of canyon was narrower still: even well ahead of Rey, Poe had to bank and fly through on his side.

‘It’s a traditional part of the Boonta Eve Classic,’ Rey said, ‘being shot up by Tusken Raiders.’

‘Well,’ Poe said, ‘if some assholes moved onto my planet and started racing these noisy buckets in my backyard, I’d shoot ‘em up, too.’ He was too busy talking; Rey had pulled up almost out of the canyon, despite being on her side, and as they raced out into the starting zone again she dropped down over top of him, sliding over the finish line first. The sim kept going, though, so Poe figured they must have more laps to come.

‘Three laps total,’ Rey called, evidently following the same train of thought.

‘And now we both know the route ahead,’ Poe said, and he realised he was grinning madly. This was _good_ , this was better than the best day in the X-Wing training sims. This was racing side-by-side with Rey, pulling stunts - flipping his pod upside down to race through a rock archway right above her - to hear her gasp over the comms. And she was showing off, too, he knew she was, could hear her crowing as she edged ahead of him into the canyon.

‘You’re not getting rid of me that easy,’ Poe said, coming up behind her so her pod was in danger of fouling on his engines or couplings. Instead of evading, she braked suddenly, forcing him to pull straight up or risk colliding with her.

‘Hard to shake off, are you?’ Rey asked, streaking ahead. 

‘You could say that,’ Poe said, slamming down the throttle and racing after her. 

They rounded the next bend, cross the short flat in seconds, and entered the second canyon.

‘We’re not just talking about podracing, are we?’ Rey said, forcing him up against the canyon wall.

‘No.’ Poe accepted the challenge, leaving the widest channel to Rey, and skimmed through the tiny space between the canyon wall and the upcoming rock formation. He was hot on her tail as they swooped into the tunnel section. ‘I guess we’re not.’

‘I’m sorry, you know,’ Rey said, pulling sharply right around a stalactite. ‘For what I said. About Ren. That wasn’t justified.’

Poe thought for a second, hugging the inside edge of the dune turn to avoid rifle fire. ‘No,’ he said, ‘it wasn’t. But I scared you, somehow.’

‘I scared me,’ Rey corrected, and she must have been distracted, because she didn’t even try to jockey to keep ahead of him as they hurtled across the flat.

They were through the third canyon and racing across the starting line for the third time before Poe decided what to say next. Part of him wanted to reassure Rey: tell her it was okay, he should have talked about it more clearly beforehand; tell her he understood and they were going to be okay. A _lot_ of him wanted to do that. This was one of the times when he realised she was very young, and he wanted to make everything easier for her.

Fortunately, Poe knew enough by now to mistrust that desire.

‘I can forgive you,’ he said, edging ahead of her into the first canyon stretch. ‘And we really, I absolutely mean this, don’t have to go there ever again. But I want… to tell you about it. I want you to understand.’

Rey raced him silently through the canyon and across the first flat. 

‘Understand what?’ she asked. ‘Understand that I hurt you? You told me something you wanted and I used it to hurt you. I get that.’

That. That was a start, Poe thought, as they took the second canyon without slowing up at all. 

‘You wouldn’t do that to me,’ Rey said. He could picture the expression on her face: vulnerable, written over with anxiety and fierce determination. He knew that expression pretty well by now. He _could_ have used her admissions of desire against her, very easily. She wasn’t shy, but when she made her wants clear she did so with a brittle show of nonchalance, like she expected to be knocked back. He’d thought, and it had proven true the first few weeks, that it was on him to be the more vulnerable, to ask first and admit hesitation, because he had more practice and more to fall back on. He hadn’t really thought about protecting himself. But then, when had he ever?

They squeezed through the same rock formation, pods banked up on their sides and engines dangerously close, and then broke out onto the dune bend. Rey took the inside edge with its meagre shelter; Poe veered sharply and tried to make himself a difficult target. 

‘I’d like,’ Poe said, narrowly beating Rey into the mouth of the third canyon, ‘to talk about it some more. About… restraint, domination, that kind of stuff. You don’t have to _do_ any of it, I just…’

‘I don’t think you’re broken,’ Rey said, edging up into his space. ‘If that’s what you’re worried about.’

‘Honestly?’ Poe said, shoving the throttle to full again, ‘I can’t promise you I’m not.’ Then they burst out onto the final stretch, Rey’s podracer still dangerously close to his. He could veer right and save them from a collision, or he could win the race. They hurtled down through the arena, Poe slightly ahead, and at the very last moment Rey’s podracer lurched, vented flame out of its engines, and drew out in front. 

Rey did a lap of the arena, crowing in glee. Poe laughed into the comms at her, and then said, ‘come out of there and gimme a hug.’

They stumbled out of the simulator pods at the same time, and Rey more or less launched herself at him, wrapping around him with arms and legs. Theoretically, Poe was strong enough to pick her up, but not when she came flying at him like a small, terrifying and very attractive missile. He stumbled back against his simulator, letting it take both of their weight, while he wrapped his arms tight enough around her middle to make her squeak. 

‘You,’ he said, into her hair, ‘are one hell of a pilot.’

‘Damn right I am,’ Rey said, giggling against his neck. ‘You’re not so bad yourself.’

It felt like a truce, an armistice, and Poe would have been perfectly happy to leave it at that. For now, at least.

‘And yeah,’ Rey said, next to his ear. ‘We can talk about it. Maybe we can… try again.’ Poe dragged in a shaky breath and reminded himself that his heart had never actually exploded any of the previous times he thought it might, so it probably wouldn’t this time.

Rey untangled her legs from around his waist and stood on them instead, using the movement that entailed to lean back and look him in the eye. He thought she might not say anything more, but that was underestimating her.

‘If you tell me _why_ ,’ she said, ‘not just what _things_ but why, I might be able to… work with it.’

‘You don’t have to _work_ with anything,’ Poe said. ‘It’s not supposed to be work!’

Rey regarded him for a moment, and this really wasn’t one of the times when she seemed very young and vulnerable. She wasn’t reading his mind - she said she knew how to avoid doing that and he believed her - but the expression on her face said she was reducing him to his prime factors and simplifying all his fractions.

‘It’s like building something from scrap,’ she said. ‘You have your desired outcome, and the parts you have may or may not be the parts you need. You’ve got to know exactly what your desired outcome is, before you try to figure out if you can get there using different parts.’ She paused for a second, and when he didn’t respond, went on. ‘What I’m saying is, you tell me what _outcome_ you want, and maybe I decide I can, er, be the right parts, or maybe I can think of some other way of putting it all together with the same outcome.’

That was one hell of a metaphor, Poe thought, and in lieu of trying to answer it, he bent down and kissed her.

* * *

Finn rounded a corner in the hangar, day's work done and vaguely thinking of dinner, maybe a holovid afterwards with Jessika or Whraapu or whoever was around, when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye.

He ducked down, trying to see through the maze of landing gear. He sighed when he spotted Rey, curled up as far as she could get under the belly of a gutted X-Wing that had been broken down for spares. He couldn't fit under there with her, he wasn't flexible enough, but he leaned up against the fuselage. 'That bad, huh?' he asked, but he didn't push for an answer. Eventually she let him grab her hand and pull her out. Their fingers stayed interlaced.

'Do you need me to kick his ass? I can totally kick his ass,' Finn said after a while, trying for joking but kind of serious. Finn was sure Poe hadn't meant to upset her this bad, or maybe she'd even offered, talked _herself_ into it - but she was freaked out, and if she hadn't spotted it herself then Poe ought to have, before it got this bad. _And people wonder why I don't like twosome sex_ , Finn thought, exasperated. 

'It isn't his fault,' said Rey. 'I thought we could … I dunno, I thought we could find a way to make him happy without, y'know, but.'

'Didn't work?'

'You could say that.'

She was shakier than Finn liked to see her. Not that he liked to see her, or anyone, upset. But she was tough. He'd seen her get through things that seemed way worse than 'sexual incompatibilities', in the grand scheme of things, without this much uncertainty. 

'C'mon,' he said, instead of saying _I think your boyfriend/girlfriend arrangement with Poe is inherently unstable, and you should really do something about that _, and shrugged his arm around her shoulder, steered her to their room.__

'Where are you going?' she asked, after he'd installed her in bed with a cup of hot chocolate and a holovid to watch. 

'To talk to Poe,' he said, and ducked out the door before she could try and argue him out of it. 

It wasn't far to Poe's room. Finn spent most of the distance figuring out how to say what he needed to, for Rey's sake, without offending Poe. 

But, 'Come in,' said Poe when Finn knocked, in the tones of someone who'd just hurriedly scrubbed their sleeves across their face and was trying to be fine. Finn took one look at him and all the kind-yet-firm phrases about how people had boundaries sometimes and you should be vigilant about making sure you didn't cross them in sexual escapades, and that negotiation was a fine thing, went out of Finn's head. 

Poe was sitting on the edge of his bunk, expectantly. When he saw that it was Finn at the door, he swallowed. 

'If you're here to tell me I'm an idiot, get in line,' he said. 'I'm not finished with me yet.'

Finn plunked himself down on the bed next to Poe. 'You're not an idiot,' he said, knocking their shoulders together. 'Well. Maybe you’re a bit of an idiot. What were you expecting, after last time?’

'I told her we didn't have to try it again,' Poe said, as if he had to make his excuses to Finn, of all people. Except, well, Finn did come bowling down here to read him the Lecture on Boundaries. ‘It wasn’t some kind of _challenge_.’

Finn rolled his eyes. 'Have you _met_ Rey?' Everything was a challenge, to Rey. Especially since she’d given up the hope that tied her to Jakku and had led her to turn down so many challenges before this.

'I'm supposed to look out for her,' Poe muttered. 'I'm supposed to be the one who knows what he's doing here, aren't I? And I thought I did, but I keep fucking it up.' He sighed, leaning into Finn like he needed to be propped up, turning his face into Finn's shoulder. 'I don't know how to not want it.'

'You don't have to not want it,' Finn pointed out. He eased his shoulder so that his arm could curve around the small of Poe's back - more comfortable for both of them that way than it being trapped between their sides, going numb and with his elbow digging into Poe's ribs. 'But you gotta see she can't give it to you, right? Not right now, anyway. Or not like this, maybe.' 

He wanted to say, _You should talk about this, you should figure it out; you're both creative, you're both smart, you ought to be able to work this out _, but if they could do that they would have by now, wouldn't they? It seemed impossible that it should be this damn hard for two people so compatible to not be able to work this out. Finn had done scenes with a woman from infotech who lost verbal processing ability very easily under sensory stimulation, such as sex. Usually she and her friends got by with simplified Galactic Sign, but it’s pretty hard to sign when you’re tied up, and Aline was pretty keen on getting tied up. Finn had thought that was an insurmountable problem, but Lila turned out to know Aline rather well and they had worked out a yes/no/maybe signalling system that relied on Aline squeezing Lila’s (or someone else’s) fingers. Of course, they had had the advantage of having more than two people present: Lila could run the scene while Finn provided backup and kept one hand behind Aline’s back, where her wrists were tied.__

Poe groaned. 'We're never gonna fix this,' he said, muffled into Finn's sleeve. 

'Well duh,' said Finn, and he couldn't quite keep all the frustration at the stupidity of the situation they'd built themselves out of his voice. 'Not on your own. There's only two of you - you should really be doing this kinda thing with an experienced third party around.'

Poe pulled himself up to look at Finn, and wow, Finn hadn't noticed quite how bad the bags under his eyes were. Had he even been sleeping? 'Sure,' Poe said, defiantly. 'Are _you_ volunteering?' 

'Yes? If you want me to?' Finn said. 'And if Rey wants me to,' he added. 'You should ask her.'

'Wait, what?'

'What?'

They stared at each other in increasingly awkward silence for some period of time, probably seconds but possibly weeks, until Poe blinked. 'Are you seriously saying you'd...'

'Hold you down for your girlfriend?' Finn finished for him. 'Yeah, sure. No big deal, right?'

Except Poe was looking at him like it was a huge deal. And maybe holding people down for sex didn't mark high on Finn's personal radar, but sex was supposed to be… not a huge deal. Right?

Then he remembered that it _was_ a big deal, to Rey. Rey had been very clear about that, the first and only time he’d invited her to join him and his friends. Big deal, only to be done with someone you really trusted, and preferably someone you fancied in the peculiar boyfriend-girlfriend way that sure as hell did not map onto the way a Stormtrooper picked their boyfriend or girlfriend. And apparently that was how Rey felt about Poe, despite their evident incompatibilities in sexual preferences.

‘Fuck,’ Poe said. ‘No, Finn, I can’t… I’m sorry, I shouldn’t even have suggested a thing like that.’ His hands were clenched, knuckles whitening. ‘I don’t… I’m not thinking straight.’

‘Apparently not,’ Finn said, reaching out to unfold Poe’s hands, soothe them into unknotting.

‘I wouldn’t ask you to do something like that,’ Poe said, and he was relaxing a little, but he still looked like a mess.

‘ _I_ wouldn’t mind,’ Finn said, feeling compelled to point that out. ‘It’s just… I know Rey likes privacy, and I guess you do to. I never see you with Jess and the rest.’

Poe blinked at him for a second. ‘Because they’re my _subordinates_ ,’ he said. ‘And, yeah, I’m getting too old for a social life quite that varied.’ He bit his lip for a moment. ‘Besides, what kind of chump would I be, if my friend has to volunteer to… to top me because I can’t communicate with my girlfriend like a fucking adult.’

Finn thought about that. ‘I think you’d be the kind of chump who has good friends,’ he said, and Poe laughed, resting his head on Finn’s shoulder again.

‘I have the best friends,’ Poe said. ‘But I think I gotta figure this one out with Rey, buddy.’ A pause, and then, ‘Or let her go before I fuck things up even more.’

* * *

Rey didn’t know what to say, when Finn got back. He’d been in Poe’s room a long time. She ought to be meditating, or doing training exercises. She was doing neither. Nor was she watching the holovid Finn had found for her.

‘He’s fine,’ Finn said, in response to her unasked question. ‘Or. He will be.’ Finn hesitated by the side of her bunk for a moment, and then reached out to clasp her shoulder. ‘He was pretty shaken up.’

‘I know,’ Rey said. ‘I know. I should. I can’t look after him. That’s what you’re supposed to do, when someone’s… like that. But I can’t.’ That wasn’t exactly right. She _could_ look after Poe if he were hurt in some predictable way, she thought. She could use the Force to calm people, make them feel safe, in an emergency or if they were seriously hurt. But to use that power over someone, making them feel safe, while you were supposed to be giving them orders, even hurting them - maybe some people could do it. People who hadn’t looked into the mind of the galaxy’s darkest Force user and found him to be _like them_ in some way. 

Finn slid into the bunk next to her, ducking to keep his head from banging on his own bunk overhead.

‘I think you need looking after, too,’ he said, after a moment. ‘You both do.’ Rey half expected another lecture on the dangers of monogamous sex, but Finn just put his arms around her instead. ‘Guess I’m gonna have to look out for you both, then.’

That was so typically… Finn, Rey thought. It’s not as if she herself was going to win any prizes for Best Adjusted Young Adult in the Galaxy, but she was pretty sure most people didn’t deal with their friends’ romantic troubles by deciding they were going to look after everyone. When Whraapu’s boyfriend, the big Wookie from Base Maintenance Crew, broke up with her, Jess Pava had come up with elaborate plans for revenge. She never enacted any of them, but she did make sure none of the members of Blue Squad spoke to him for a week, and this was said to be a reassuring show of solidarity.

All in all, Rey was glad Finn hadn’t decided to kick Poe’s ass after all. Or hers, for that matter. He was pretty good friends with Poe, as well as her, and _she_ was the one who’d messed up. The one who’d told Poe not to move, not to speak, and then hadn’t _noticed_ when he’d just… gone somewhere else. She hadn’t noticed because she had damped down all the background awareness of other people’s thoughts that the Force usually brought her, and she’d done that in the first place because she _didn’t trust herself_...

‘Hey,’ Finn said, and Rey realised she was shaking against him. ‘Hey. It’s okay,’ he said. ‘Poe’s okay. You’re okay. We’re all okay. We’re all going to be just fine.’

‘Lemme guess, you’re going to make sure of that?’ 

‘Yeah,’ Finn said. ‘I am.’ That’s what Rey liked about Finn: he wasn’t the kind of idealist Poe was, or even really much of an optimist. He’d wanted to walk away, on Takodana. But he’d wanted to take her with him, and when it came down to it, when Kylo Ren had carried her off, Finn had come back for her. Not because of the nobleness of the Resistance cause, but because he’d decided her wanted to keep her safe. Of course he did care about doing the right thing, but Rey knew he didn’t have Poe’s idealistic belief in the Republic, or the General’s iron-clad commitment to what the Republic _ought_ to be and wasn’t. Finn had signed up to the Resistance and expanded the list of people he was going to keep safe. He was like Master Luke, in that respect, except Master Luke had already tried to keep the whole galaxy safe, and had failed.

‘I could…’ Finn started to say something, and then stopped. Rey tilted her head up to look at him. ‘Rey,’ he said, cautious. ‘I know. I know you don’t want me to invite you join any of my scenes.’ Scenes, Rey knew, was one of the words Jess and Finn used for their various sexual escapades. Finn sometimes used the word ‘recreation sessions’, which no one else on base used, so was probably something from the Stormtroopers. And no, Rey did not want to model her sex life on anything the Stormtroopers thought was safe and healthy, even if it did seem to be working out okay for Finn.

‘But,’ Finn said, still sounding hesitant. ‘I could… help you and Poe. Maybe. Just me, no one else. I’m a good spotter.’

Rey had an image of Finn in the gym, coaxing her and Poe alternately through lifting weights. Which was actually a thing he had done, although not for both of them in sequence. 

‘Or if you want,’ Finn went on, ‘I could dominate Poe, and you could watch? I can explain to you as I go, so you know what it looks like when it works properly.’

The thing is, Rey _did_ want to know. Poe had talked: about relaxation coming with giving up control, about endorphins and pain and about enjoying testing his physical limits. About clarity, and about the payoff for compliance being in not having to perform for anyone or achieve anything. It sounded… well, it sounded kind of nice, and the stuff about being in your body and not in your head all the time sounded a lot like the things Master Luke had to say about meditation. Only meditation was deathly boring, even if the outcome was good for her, and ideally sex shouldn’t be deathly boring.

‘Okay then,’ Rey said. Then, after a second’s thought: ‘You don’t mean right _now_ , do you?’

‘Of course not,’ Finn said. ‘We’ll have to co-ordinate all our schedules.’

Rey took a moment to consider the fact that in under a year, she’d gone from someone who counted the days in scratch-marks on the wall, to someone who had a schedule synchronised across various data systems, and now apparently she was going to co-ordinate said schedule with her boyfriend and her best friend in order to arrange sex.

* * *

Poe took a deep breath, and met Rey's eyes from across the room. She was sitting in a chair, knees folded up against her chest, watching. Watching Poe get ready to be pushed around by their friend. But she was half smiling, and Finn's palm was warm when it landed on Poe's shoulder, and the weird, fluttering uncertainty about the whole thing, which had taken up residence in Poe's chest when they'd finally found a time that worked for all of them to do this, finally started to settle. 

'Get on the bed,' said Finn. 'Please.'

So polite, but the push he gave Poe was firm and non-negotiable. Not that Poe was intending to try and negotiate. He turned away from Rey in order to do as he was told, got onto the mattress on his knees, debated with himself for a long moment on whether to lie down, to stay kneeling, to turn around - but as long as she was watching, it didn't matter how he positioned himself as long as she could see, and if Finn wanted something he could ask for it, _would_ ask for it, that was the whole point. 

And Poe … Poe liked the feeling of being watched, the prickle on the back of his neck. Knowing the other pilot had their sights on you but not knowing when they'd engage. Hypervigilance was already something he'd elevated to an art form.

He was so fixed on Rey's gaze on his bare back, Poe didn't notice Finn getting closer until a voice by his ear said, 'Tell me what you're going to say to make me stop.'

It had been a rule. Finn had made them lay down rules, and while Poe had only halfway bothered with that kind of thing before (usually if someone grabbed him in the heat of the moment and bent him over, he'd get too caught up in it to stop and negotiate), the look of relief that rules had brought to Rey's face made it worth it. 

'Tusken,' said Poe softly. 

'Again,' said Finn, putting his hand back on Poe's shoulder. 'So she can hear you. What are you gonna say if you need me to stop?'

Poe dug down through the shiver Finn's touch gave him, and said 'Tusken,' again, louder. 

'Good.' Finn stroked down Poe's spine, then back up. Soothing. 'Tell me what you want, Poe, and I'll give it to you. You want me to hold you down?'

It was the same voice Finn used to offer a cup of coffee, or a hand with loading gear onto a truck. 

'Yes,' said Poe, rolling his eyes, safe in the knowledge he was facing away. He didn't want helpful and nice. Wasn't that the point? Wasn't that the entire - 

Finn's hand clamped all of a sudden around the nape of Poe's neck. Fuck, the strength in that broad, hard grip. 'Nuh-uh,' he said. 'You're going to answer me honestly, and respectfully, or this stops. You got that? We're doing this my way, Dameron.' There was a pause, just long enough for a moment of eye contact, and then Finn corrected himself. _'Our_ way.'

There was another moment’s silence. Finn’s fingers pressed in against the tendons of Poe’s neck, just this side of painful. It was doing things to Poe, good things, very good things that made his breath feel heavy in his chest. And his cock heavy in his pants. Definitely good things.

He hadn’t answered Finn again, though. 

‘Tell him, Poe,’ Rey said. He hadn’t been expecting her to speak. He certainly hadn’t been expecting her to give orders, not framed like that, all hard and implacable. ‘Tell him how much you want it.’

‘I want it, alright!’ It came out defiant, half-ashamed, and he hadn’t sounded like that for… not since he was their age, probably, twenty years old and swamped with want and no idea how to ask for anything. Poe felt his head drop, arms bowing, breath scraping in his throat. Finn still had him gripped tight by the back of the neck. ‘I want you to hold me down and wreck me, okay?’

He thought, for a second, that he was going to be pulled up again: that was hardly respectful, and while it was technically honest, he wouldn’t put it past either of them to demand he give them a specific list of acts. It must have been enough, though, because Finn's hand drifted up Poe's spine to where he had his ass in the air. His fingers hooked in the back of Poe's pants. 

'You can take these off.'

The mattress dipped, and Finn was suddenly in Poe's eyeline. He settled himself sitting against the headboard. He was shirtless, and he looked as much at ease like that, half-naked in someone else's bed with someone else's boyfriend, as he did in full uniform and on duty. Maybe more so, even. 

He looked good. And he looked at Poe like he was sizing up exactly how to take him to pieces. When their eyes finally met, Poe's hands still halfway through undoing his fly, Finn grinned. He twirled his finger. 'Turn around,' he said, mischievously. 'Let her see you too.'

Poe hesitated. What if she didn't like it, what if she was upset again...

'That's an _order,_ Dameron. Get your damn pants off and let your girlfriend see how hard you are for her.' Finn's tone dropped low. Poe spun himself around on his knees before he could even process properly, and he was shoving his trousers down his thighs, getting tangled up in trying to kick them off, eager to do as he was told, to be _good_.

When he looked up, Rey's feet were flat on the ground instead of up on the chair. She'd unfolded, her thighs just that little bit slouched apart. Poe abruptly wanted to be between them, wanted her to call him over and tell him to get to work. He'd do it, he'd crawl for her, he'd make her feel so good...

A heavy, iron-strong arm clamped around his waist. 

'How's he doing, d'you think?' Finn asked, over Poe's head. 

Rey smiled. 'Good,' she said. 'Poe, you're doing good.'

Poe shivered, licked his lips hungrily, and Finn laughed. 'Oh, he likes that. You like being good, Dameron?'

Poe could feel the heat flushing over his skin. He closed his eyes, trying to stay calm, and nodded. 

'Let's see if you can keep it up, then,' said Finn. 'Let's see how much you can take.' Poe was on his belly on the mattress, splayed flat with his legs knocked out from under him, before he even registered that Finn was moving. Finn plastered himself over Poe's back, slid his hands down Poe's arms to catch his wrists. 

Poe thrashed, his body running on the instinct to try and free himself even while his mind howled triumphantly. _Finally_ they were getting somewhere.

'Hey,' said Finn, fingers tightening in between the tendons of Poe's forearms. 'Calm down, buddy. I got you.' He shifted his grip until he could get both of Poe's wrists under one broad palm, and reached back down for something. Poe forced himself to be still, biting his lip and looking up at Rey in her chair. 

_Good_ , she mouthed at him. Ridiculously, it soothed him. Yes. He could be good. 

Something snapped around his wrists, and he jerked in shock. Cuffs. Finn had cuffed him, both wrists, stretched out in front of him, not tied down but tied, and then Finn's comforting weight lifted off him. Poe's cock twitched at the realisation that there was nothing he could do about that, no amount of wanting would bring Finn back before _he_ decided. 

'Please,' Poe muttered, rubbing his face into the sheets all rucked up between his bound hands, embarrassed. He wriggled his hips down to the mattress, grinding, because he needed friction, dammit, he needed it, they were leaving him high and dry here. 

'Stop that,' said Rey immediately, and Finn's hands were back, briefly, but only to scoop Poe's hips back up til he was on his knees again. 'Be patient, Poe,' Rey said when he looked up at her pleadingly. 'You trust Finn, don't you? He'll look after you.'

Poe did trust Finn, he did, although part of him wanted to point out that he didn't trust _Rey_ , because she'd been known to tease. Of course, he really fucking liked that, so he had no grounds to complain.

'Gonna need you to hold still for me,' Finn said from behind him. 'You stay put and I think you're gonna like where this is going - if you act out, though, I'll find something else to do you might not like so much.' His fingers slid down the cleft of Poe's ass gently, slick and warm. Poe nearly bit through his lip when Finn started easing one around the rim of his hole. 

'Whatever you're doing, he likes it,' said Rey. Poe only realised he'd mashed his face into the bedclothes when her voice came through muffled. He pulled himself up to look at her again, to reassure himself that she was still okay with this, still on board, and that shifted him ever so slightly against the intrusion of Finn's fingers - ever so slightly, but enough to pull a whimper out of him. 'He really likes it,' said Rey, and … did she sound intrigued?

'Wanna come see what I'm doing?' Finn asked her conspiratorially. 'In case you wanna, y'know. Have a go sometime?'

His fingers - how many? Poe didn't know, had lost track, but enough to be the addictive kind of sore, a gentle, insistent pressure all the way around - crooked just a little, and Poe buried his face back in the blankets and groaned. 

'Yeah,' said Rey. 'Show me.' She clattered out of her chair and a second later the mattress dipped with her weight. Poe shuddered, knowing he was edging his knees wider apart and hoping it wouldn't be against whatever rules of good behaviour Finn was working off. He wanted to do as he was told, he did, but he couldn't stop _wanting_. 

He got a warning swat to the back of a thigh, barely even a love tap, just a warning, and grinned. Not much of a punishment if you enjoy it, but he wasn't going to tell Finn that.

Finn was busy, anyway, giving what was clearly a masterclass in fingering. Poe worked up from wriggling surreptitiously, trying to obey the directive he'd been given, to shoving back on Finn's fingers as hard as he could, trying to get _fucked_ , dammit, but there was nothing but that one touch in that one place, and the murmur of conversation behind him. 

Poe's face hurt from the harsh scratch of blankets against his cheeks, his knees ached, his nipples were sore from rubbing against the bed, and that would have been fine, would have been perfect, but …

 _I'm breaking your rules_ , he thought to himself, arching his back and swaying into Finn's touch. _C'mon, I'm being bad, punish me, tell me off, c'mon, c'mon..._

But try as he might he couldn't get a rise out of them and it was making something in his chest go tight, panicked, this wasn't what - except it was, except he couldn't deny, he was getting what he asked for, cuffed and put down, being made to wait. 

He looked up, but of course, the chair was empty. No Rey to see him, reassure him that he was good. Doing good, being good. Not that he was, any more. 

He bit into the blanket under him and threw all his strength into trying to break the cuffs, fighting their hold on him. Someone's hand rubbed at the small of his back, like he was a pet that needed soothing. He kept on, wrenching at the restraints. It hurt. Good, right? That was what he'd asked for, that was what he deserved, and he didn't get to choose how or when or where, he'd asked them to take that away from him -

The memory of Finn's knowing expression when he'd asked _what are you gonna say if you need me to stop?_ cut across Poe's mind. He shuddered. No. What if they stopped and never started again?

He pulled and pulled and pulled though, the raw skin of his wrists throbbing. It was all he could feel, that burning pain and the ache of wanting more.

Behind him, they were still talking. 'Please,' Poe said into the crook of his elbow, the breath sobbing out of him. 'Please guys, please, _please_ …'

He didn't know how long he lay like that, dizzy and torn between desire and revulsion, but finally words cut through it, loud enough to jolt him.

‘Finn, stop.’ That was Rey’s voice. Everything felt heavy. There was lead in Poe's gut.

Poe had done something wrong. He knew that. He had disobeyed to make them react. But he didn't want Finn to stop. He wanted them to drag him out of his head and instead Finn was pulling free.

'No,' he said, voice tiny and raw.

‘Something’s wrong,’ Finn said, which just confirmed it. He didn't go away, though, even though he'd pulled his fingers out - he kept his other hand on the small of Poe’s back, and Poe was pathetically, stupidly grateful. 

‘I’m sorry,’ Poe said. The words were thick on his tongue. He ought to say more, to prostrate himself at Finn’s feet, and Rey’s feet, fuck, both of them, either of them, and flood them with apologies. The words wouldn’t come.

‘Why didn’t you say something?’ Finn asked. 

‘Don’t want to stop,’ Poe said. That much was true. He didn’t. He wanted to go _back_. Something had gone wrong and instead of alive he felt heavy, dull, and his skin seemed to fit wrong. But he didn’t want to stop; he wanted to rewind and start again.

Neither Finn nor Rey answered him for a second. Then Rey spoke, but it wasn’t to him.

‘You said you could make it work properly.’ She sounded accusatory, and she was talking to Finn. That wasn’t right, that wasn’t fair. Poe leaned towards the sound of her voice, until he could feel her, solid up against him. 

‘This is properly,’ Finn said. ‘Something went wrong and you noticed, so you said to stop.’

‘Don’t wanna stop,’ Poe said, again, louder this time. 

‘You want me to keep fingering you?’ Finn asked, sounding skeptical.

‘No,’ Rey said, over the top of Finn. ‘No, you can’t, it feels _wrong_. Can’t you sense it?’ She was kneeling up now, moving away. She got off the bed entirely, and oh fuck, Poe wasn't sure he would be able to take it if she walked out on him like this again. He strained towards her but he had so little room to move. ‘You’re sensitive, I know you are.’

‘Not that sensitive,’ Finn said, but he sounded gentler, more curious. ‘Poe, want to tell us what happened there?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. His own words still sounded like they were coming from too far away. ‘I don’t want to… I’m sorry. I'm sorry I disobeyed, I just. I couldn't see you.’ It sounded pathetic, even to his ears. 'And it felt like .. like you weren't … like _I wasn't_ there.'

‘Hey,’ Rey said, sliding onto the bed again, this time in front of him. She put one hand out to touch his face. ‘It’s okay. You’re still here. Finn and I are still here. We’re all going to be fine.’

She reached down and picked up his bound wrists, rubbing at the edges of the cuffs, where Poe dimly registered that it was hurting. He'd pulled at them too hard. He'd hurt himself, disobeying. Rey undid the cuffs, and he whined, pressing his face into her chest. She dropped the cuffs somewhere, but kept hold of his hands, fingers rubbing at the sore spots. It was ridiculous, how much better that made him feel, but it it did.

‘What do you need me to do?’ Finn asked, and the thought of having to answer that made Poe shiver and press his face into Rey again. He could feel her breathing, soft and steady, under his cheek.

Rey hummed, and rubbed her thumbs over the pulse points on Poe’s wrists. ‘Poe was enjoying you fingering him,’ she said, and Poe found himself nodding against her breasts. ‘ _I_ was enjoying watching that,’ she added.

‘But you said…’ Finn smoothed his palm out against Poe’s ass, the touch showing none of the hesitation in his voice.

‘We’ll do it differently this time,’ Rey said. ‘I’m gonna stay right here, where Poe can see me.’ She paused, and he could feel her looking down. ‘Er. Or mash his face into me, as the case may be.’ She dipped her chin to kiss the top of Poe’s head, and fuck. He kind of loved her.

‘Okay then,’ Finn said, and he put his fingers back where they ought to be, in Poe’s ass. Three, Poe thought, all at once and no preamble. Which was fine, he was still slick from before, but Finn wasn’t taking it slow. Poe whined and shoved his hips back, looking for _more_ , harder, rougher until it _hurt_.

‘Hey, now,’ Finn said, and clamped his free hand down on Poe’s hip, holding him steady. ‘Patience. Hold still.’

Rey was murmuring in his ear: ‘Shhh, hold still, Finn’s got you, I’ve got you,’ and Poe was really very glad he had his face buried in her breasts. Not just for the usual reasons - although that too, they were damn fine breasts - but he had a strong suspicion that if anyone made him look at them he might cry.

He held still, even when Finn went from roughly fucking him with three fingers to rubbing right up against his prostate with two the pads of two fingers moving in counterpoint. Even when it was too much: too direct, overwhelming and amazing all at once. He held still, he didn’t buck his hips and he didn’t spread his knees wider and he didn’t shove back on Finn’s fingers. No one had told him not to make any noise, so he whined and moaned and muttered incoherent strings about _so good_ and _too much more now yes too much good_.

At some point in there he turned his head far enough to one side that he wasn’t speaking primarily to Rey’s boobs and growled out, ‘Hell, Finn, are you gonna _fuck_ me already?’

Rey’s fingers tightened in his hair - she’d let his hands go at some point - and Finn’s stopped moving inside him. Poe remembered, with a dull, thudding sort of feeling, that they hadn’t _talked_ about that. Finn was supposed to pin him down and push him around, that’s all.

‘Maybe I will,’ Finn said, still not moving his fingers. ‘Maybe I won’t.’

Rey still wasn’t saying anything. Poe risked moving enough to look up at her. She wasn’t looking at him, but at Finn, with a calculating sort of look on her face.

‘Make him earn it,’ she suggested.

‘That’s a plan,’ Finn answered, rocking his fingers ever so slightly inside Poe’s ass. Poe was very, very careful not to move at all. ‘How do you suggest he should do that?’

‘I dunno,’ Rey said. ‘What have you got up your sleeve?’

‘Nothing,’ Finn said, deadpan. ‘I’m not wearing a shirt.’

Poe had to laugh, smothering his giggles in Rey’s chest. Finn caught him, though, and smacked him lightly across the ass.

‘Respect!’ Finn snapped, but his voice sounded like he was laughing too.

‘Or what?’ Poe was pushing the boundaries again, he knew he was, but this time it was fun. He could feel Rey’s chest quivering with laughter underneath his face.

Finn smacked him again, harder this time, and he dragged in a breath and all the laughter went out of him. Fuck. Yes.

‘Or that,’ Finn said.

Well, if that was what it was going to get him, he could put on some more sass. ‘Is that all you got?’

Another smack, open-palmed and stinging across his ass-cheek. Poe didn’t bother answering back to that one, just concentrated on breathing, on the faint endorphin rush even that gave him.

‘You like that, Poe?’ Rey pulled his head up a little to look at him, and she didn’t look horrified. She didn’t look turned on, exactly, either, but curious.

‘Yes,’ Poe said. ‘I told you.’

Rey looked up at Finn. ‘Give him that first. Spank him before you fuck him.’

‘Gimme a second, then,’ Finn said, sliding his fingers out again and stepping back. Poe had Rey this time, though, and she tugged him up until he was half-sprawled over her, and then pulled his face down to kiss him. There was a clatter on the other side of the room, probably Finn, but Poe wasn’t paying him much attention. He was entirely too busy rutting up against Rey, one of his legs between hers and his mouth on her neck, her collarbones. He got her shirt partly opened so he could kiss her breasts properly. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath it; she didn’t usually when she was in civvies.

Rey stopped moving beneath him, and Poe turned to follow her gaze. Finn was standing beside the bed, looking down at them and smiling like he was _proud_ of them somehow. Admittedly, Finn beamed at Rey like he was proud of her for merely existing pretty much all of the time, and Poe could understand the sentiment.

‘Don’t let me interrupt you,’ Finn said, and Poe realised he had cleaned off his hands and found a sheath from somewhere. Poe was going to get fucked and it was going to be amazing.

‘Oh no,’ Rey said, nonchalant. ‘We can do this any time.’ She smiled up at Finn, and then added, ‘Let me borrow Poe for a second, then he’s all yours.’

‘Borrow me for what?’ Poe asked, as if he wouldn’t do almost anything she asked, with alacrity and enthusiasm.

‘These are getting… annoying,’ Rey said, hooking her thumbs in the waistband of her pants. ‘Take them off for me?’

Poe could do that. She leaned back on her hands, letting him unbutton her flies, and raising her hips so he could peel the pants off. No sooner was her ass back on the mattress than she had one hand in her panties. 

‘You had a job to do, Dameron,’ Finn said, and Poe realised he’d stopped, hands still tangled in Rey’s pants around her ankles, to stare as she fingered herself right in front of him. It wasn’t that that hadn’t happened _before_... Although actually, it was pretty rare for Rey to touch herself like that, so plainly inviting him to watch. But like this, right now: she’d told him to take her pants off so she could more easily get her hands in her panties while Finn spanked him. Sweet force. 

‘Take the pants off,’ Finn said, resting one hand on Poe’s shoulder. ‘And fold them up neatly.’

Poe did as he was told, wondering how on earth Finn managed to be so coherent when Rey was touching herself _right there_ in front of them. There was an awkward moment when he’d passed the pants to Finn, and Rey had taken her hand out of her panties and they just all stared at each other. Then Rey let herself sprawl back against the pillows, and said,

‘Come here, you.’

Poe went, and let her arrange him so he had his ass in the air and his head down, pillowed on her stomach. 

‘All yours, Finn,’ Rey said, scritching the sensitive spot at the back of Poe’s neck.

‘This is how you earn a good fuck from me,’ Finn said, arranging himself on the bed behind Poe. ‘One,’ he said, starting with a light smack across Poe’s ass - it wasn’t much, but it was on the sensitive skin where ass meets thigh, and stung enough to make Poe draw in a rapid breath.

‘Count for me,’ Finn said. ‘Twenty, to start with. Can you keep count to twenty?’

Poe made some noise of agreement, all rushed and wanting in dignity, and Finn began to spank him in earnest. It was… well, if he’d had any doubts about Finn’s competence that did away with the last of them. Between the sensation and the counting and Rey’s warm, comforting hands on his neck and shoulders, it filled up his head and drowned everything else out. His consciousness narrowed down to sensation, to the transfer of force and energy between Finn’s hand and his ass, shoving him forward and into Rey’s body. Rey murmured something soothing above him, but he’d lost track. She was there and warm and not angry or frightened and that was enough.

Twenty came and they gave him a minute to breathe. He thought about protesting: he could take more, he _had_ taken more, before this. But Finn pressed kisses against the sensitive skin of his ass and that distracted him, and then Rey tossed something to Finn over Poe’s back: more lube, and then the sheath that had been discarded at some point.

The last time Poe had had a dick in his ass, he’d been face up. He’d dug his heels into the guy’s back and urged him on, pulled him down and bitten his lip until it was raw, and earned himself something of a reputation on that particular Navy base as a demanding bottom. On the strength of one encounter and a partner who didn’t know the meaning of ‘don’t kiss and tell’.

This time he was ass-up and his skin tingled and his mind had gone fuzzy already. Finn could do pretty much anything with him, at this point, which ought to be scary, but it wasn’t, not with Rey’s hands on his shoulders and her voice mingling with Finn’s. Poe let Finn manhandle him a bit, arrange his hips at the right angle. Then Finn pushed inside of him, not roughly but not slowly either, not stopping until he’d bottomed out. He was leaning over Poe, too, so they were skin-to-skin all up their thighs and Poe’s ass stung a little where Finn’s belly hair rubbed against it. 

Finn and Rey were talking over top of him. 

‘Fast or slow?’ Finn was asking.

‘Fast,’ Rey said, fingers sliding down Poe’s cheek. ‘Fast and hard.’

It was for things like this that Poe liked her so much.

And for the fact that she had her other hand, the one that wasn’t stroking his face, in her panties. It wasn’t for show, either, he could _smell_ her arousal. It was pretty hard to want anything right now except this, Finn fucking him fast and hard and Rey absorbing the shock, but he would have to be a long way gone not to want to get his face up in her cunt when she smelled that good.

‘Give me your hands,’ Finn said, slowing to an unexpected halt. Poe turned his head to look over his shoulder at him. ‘Give me your hands, Poe,’ Finn said, firmer this time. 

Poe realised he had one of his hands underneath Rey’s hip, and the other fisted around his dick. He didn’t remember deciding to do that. He should have asked.

He held out both his hands to Rey, who was in front of him, but she shook her head. ‘Behind your back,’ she said. ‘Finn wants your hands behind your back.’

Putting his hands behind his back meant Rey taking all his weight. She didn’t seem to mind, though, and Finn wrapped one hand around both of Poe’s wrists and used the grip for leverage, fucking him harder and deeper. 

It took a little bit longer before Poe remembered the other thing about being fucked like this. He wasn’t going to come, not until someone touched him, and even then, probably not unless someone told him he could. Fuck. It had been a very, very long time.

He tried to say something. He could probably have managed ‘no’ or ‘stop’ or ‘Tusken’, but like hell was he going to call a halt on this to discuss anything so simple as orgasms.

Finn was looking after him, though. Finn knew about this sort of thing.

‘Rey, can you…’ Finn said, and his voice was rough and raw. He must be close, too. Rey caught on quickly, and her clever, calloused fingers wrapped around Poe’s dick. She’d figured out how he liked to be touched, by now, but at this point he’d take anything. 

‘Come on then,’ Rey murmured in his ear. ‘We’ve got you, you can come.’ Poe was already shuddering, breaking apart, when she added, ‘Both of you,’ and Finn slammed into him twice, three times, deep and hard and perfect. Poe collapsed into Rey, but Finn kept his balance, sliding out and getting off the bed to deal with the sheath. 

Poe thought he ought to do something, say something, to Finn, but he couldn’t think what. Besides, it was absolutely imperative that he get his face in Rey’s cunt as soon as possible. Rey was gorgeous and beautiful and telling him how good he was: she deserved to come, too.

* * *

Rey carded her fingers through Poe’s hair, humming a little in pleasure as he mouthed at her through the fabric of her panties. Finn had dumped the sheath and come back, pulling Poe’s wrists back together behind his back before Poe could get her panties off. That wasn’t terribly efficient, but Poe seemed to like it, and Rey could cope with a little more teasing.

‘You like that, huh?’ Finn asked. He was asking Poe, Rey thought, by the fact that he rested one hand in between Poe’s shoulder-blades as he did. ‘You like eating her out, making her feel real good?’

Rey felt weird about that, about Finn talking about her in the third person. But Poe made some kind of deep, desperate noise in the back of his throat and pushed his face harder up against her, all hot and messy and no finesse at all.

Seized by a sudden impulse, Rey pulled him back a little, fisting her fingers in his hair. Not enough to hurt, not really, but that didn’t seem to matter at this point: Poe’s eyes were glazed and the background hum she got off him was dazed, happy, full of want.

‘You look really good like this,’ she said, and yes, that was the right thing to say. Poe smiled up at her, mouth barely visible over the mound of her pubis, like she’d given him a personal gift of the moon.

‘Doesn’t he look good?’ She turned her own eyes up to Finn, not wanting to leave him out of this. Poe looked _good_ and she wanted to share that with Finn. Interesting.

‘Yeah,’ Finn said. And then, eyes tracking from her face to her hand in Poe’s hair, he added, ‘You don’t look so bad yourself.’

‘Really?’ Rey blurted out the question before she could stop herself. She didn’t think about how she looked, much. Certainly not about how _Finn_ thought she looked.

‘You look great,’ Finn said. He let his eyes skim over her body, and she did feel a bit exposed: she was half-naked, her pants off and her shirt askew, in front of her best friend. It didn’t feel like a bad kind of exposed, though. Not the same kind of heady, intimate exposed that she still hadn’t got used to, with Poe. Something else. 

‘Doesn’t she, Poe?’ Finn prompted. ‘She looks like a woman who knows she’s about to get eaten out exactly the way she likes.’

Poe’s eyes drifted from her face to Finn’s and back again. ‘She’s fucking _beautiful_ ,’ he said. His voice cracked a little, like he had forgotten how to make words work properly. She wasn’t trying to read him, but she wasn’t blocking him out either, and the buzz of thoughts and emotions coming off him was making her giddy. Awe and adoration and so much gratitude she could barely process it. And want. So much want. If she hadn’t already wanted him, wanted his face in her cunt already (and as often as she could get it, to be honest), she would now, just from empathetic transfer.

‘Do you have any idea how much you’re broadcasting right now?’ Rey asked. She was laughing, and that was new, too. She didn’t _like_ taking on other people’s emotions, not even Poe’s. But this. This seemed to be okay. Finn was there, too, and she couldn’t get drowned in Poe, not with the warm steady hum of Finn’s mind in the room with them.

‘Don’t care,’ Poe answered, nuzzling his cheek up against her crotch. ‘Don’t care _at all_.’

Finn laughed and stroked his hand down Poe’s back. Poe arched against it like a pet being stroked. 

Rey bit her lip. ‘I’m not _trying_ to read you,’ she said. ‘It’s just you’re all… all over the place right now.’

Poe wriggled his shoulders and sat up on his knees. Finn still had his wrists held together behind his back, but he let Poe up, so that he could look Rey in the eye.

‘I _know_ ,’ Poe said, forcefully. ‘I know what having someone in my mind against my will feels like, and this isn’t it. This is _nice_.’ He looked up at Finn for a second, looking for reassurance, perhaps.

‘Now,’ Poe said, to Finn. ‘Can we please get her undressed so I can do this properly.’

‘We _could_ ,’ Finn said. ‘Or we could make you work for it.’ He must have tightened his grip on Poe’s wrists, because Poe’s eyes went wide and unfocused. ‘What can he do to earn that, Rey? Something impressive…’

‘Ask me really, really nicely?’ Rey suggested. She didn’t have it in her to think up complicated games, really, but she _did_ enjoy it when Poe got specific and explicit.

‘Fuck,’ Poe said, and he might have leaned forward again except Finn had his free hand clamped down on Poe’s shoulder now. ‘I really, really want my face in your cunt, Rey, please, I want to lick you until you come and I want to do it again, with my fingers this time, or… ngggh!’ He broke off, suddenly turning back to Finn.

‘Who said you’ll get your hands back?’ Finn asked him. He must have dug his fingernails into Poe’s wrists. ‘I could cuff you again.’

Rey stiffened, but Poe didn’t seem to react badly to that threat. Quite the opposite.

‘Prove yourself,’ Finn said, letting Poe go. ‘Stay there. Just like that. Hands behind your back.’ Then, perhaps remembering what Poe had said about being left alone, he added. ‘Can you do that? Stay still and wait while we get Rey undressed?’

‘Yes,’ Poe answered, promptly. He straightened his shoulders like he was standing to attention, and that shouldn’t be hot. That should be a terrible parody of his real occupation, which was dangerous and could get him killed. But it was still hot. 

‘That’s good,’ Rey said, remembering what he’d said about not having to _achieve_ things for a while. If they were going to give him tasks they should set the bar low and shower him in praise. It wasn’t much of a hardship, honestly. ‘You’re doing so _well_ ,’ she added, and the smile she got back was a little bit amused. He could tell what she was doing, how she was catering to him. And he liked it. 

‘So are you,’ Finn said, extending one hand to her to help her up. And Rey liked that, liked hearing that from him. Not in the same way Poe did, but it was nice, knowing Finn was on her side.

‘Do you want to undress, or do you want me to do it?’ Finn asked her, and Rey stopped still. She hadn’t _thought_ about that. She’d organised to have sex with her best friend and her boyfriend at the same time, and hadn’t thought at all about the possibility of Finn touching her.

‘It’s okay if you don’t want me to touch you,’ Finn said, evidently following her train of thought. ‘Some people don’t.’

‘What kind of people?’ Rey asked.

‘Well, lots of Stormtroopers,’ Finn said, and Rey wanted to punch them all, because that tone of voice had hurt behind it. ‘And here… there are women who don’t like touching men. Some men don’t like touching other men.’

Rey wondered, for a second, what brought such people into Finn’s elaborate sexual orbit, but she’d long ago resigned all hope of making sense of Finn’s social life, so she ignored it. She did a mental check instead: she did not mind being naked in front of Finn; she had nothing against touching him when clothed; she was really very turned on by watching him with Poe. 

‘Come here, then,’ she said. ‘Take my clothes off.’ Finn grinned at her, the same wide unhesitating grin he’d given her on the Falcon that first day, and came forward to unbutton her shirt. She was wearing what Poe called her civvies. Not her Padawan robes and not the nice outfit with the quilted vest that Leia had given her. Just a white shirt with buttons, and the pants Poe had taken off her earlier.

It could have been awkward, but it wasn’t. It turned out to be fascinating, the way Finn handled her clothes with care. He unbuttoned the remaining buttons on the shirt carefully, fingers brushing over her belly. She shivered, but he didn’t dwell there: instead he slid the shirt off her shoulders, not slowly but deliberately, and he stepped away to fold it and place it squarely on Poe’s dresser.

Poe was watching them both, eyes hungry. It wasn’t as if Rey particularly wanted to be in charge of Finn, but there was something in this situation that made her giddy. Finn had treated Poe roughly, asserted himself with confidence, pushed him about, and now he was handling her clothes as if they were valuable in themselves.

And he was waiting for her say-so before removing her panties, she realised.

‘Take them off,’ she said. That sounded a bit abrupt, so she added, ‘please.’

‘Gladly,’ Finn answered her, and it struck her then how very _different_ this was to compelling anyone. It wasn’t even submission, coming from Finn. He was just waiting for permission, and the line between very specific permission and instructions was a fine one indeed.

Finn turned her a little to one side, so she was standing directly facing Poe, before he peeled her panties off her hips and slid them down her legs.

‘Where do you want him?’ Finn asked, as Poe’s gaze followed his hands down her thighs and then settled on her crotch, staring right at it as if he could pull her forward by the power of his will. He couldn’t, but he looked like he might try.

‘How about on your back?’ Rey asked Poe directly, which was probably against the spirit of the scene, but Finn could turn it into an order if necessary. ‘How about I sit on your face?’ He looked good like that: she could see most of his face, more of it than she could if she were lying down, and although she didn’t get off as easily that way, Poe really, really liked it.

‘Fuck, _yes_ ,’ Poe said, starting to scramble forward.

‘Did I say you could move?’ Finn said, and Rey had to smile. He picked up the slack when she let it drag. ‘Stay there.’

Poe froze. Finn stepped away from Rey, fingers trailing down her arm in reassurance as he did. Then he knelt on the bed, crowded up into Poe’s physical space, and kissed him like it might be the last thing he ever did. Poe gasped, startled, then whined and melted into the kiss. Sweet Force, but they looked pretty together. Rey watched them, and started to think she could see the logic in Finn’s complicated sex life. Did everyone look this pretty making out? Did _she_ look that good? 

‘Now,’ Finn said, drawing back. ‘Lie down with your head on the pillows, you get a better angle that way.’ Of course, Rey thought. Finn probably knew all about having people sit on his face. ‘And put your hands above your head. You’re not going to use them to touch Rey, or yourself. Is he, Rey?’

‘Not yet,’ Rey said, and was rewarded by Poe’s rapid intake of breath, combined with Finn’s approving smile.

‘Go on, lie down,’ Finn said to Poe, and he complied, wrapping his hands around a rung of the headboard to demonstrate his intention not to touch. Rey climbed over him, just as awkward as this always was, but Poe lifted his head up to meet her as she settled with her knees on either side of him. 

Other times they’d done this, Poe had been showing off, exercising all the skills he had: lowering her slowly, licking up each of her labia in turn and flicking her clit gently with his tongue only to move away again. It wasn’t as if he went straight for sucking her clit this time, either: instead, he might as well have been trying to _eat_ her, or bury himself in her face-first. His knuckles went white on the headboard, and she could tell he’d be pulling her down by the hips if he were allowed. He mouthed at her with lips and tongue all at once, working in as deep as he could, tongue curling inside her at the earliest opportunity. He had his eyes closed, and she wasn’t sure he could even breathe like this, but he didn’t seem to care. She balanced herself against the headboard with one hand and buried the other in his hair.

‘Fuck, Poe,’ she said, hips working against him already. He had stubble on his chin, which was really very much to her benefit right now. ‘You look… Hell. You look fantastic.’ He looked like he’d met his own personal heaven right there in her cunt, and by the buzz in the Force coming off him, he agreed with that assessment. 

‘Finn, come here,’ Rey said, holding Poe’s face steady. ‘Come and tell Poe how good he looks.’

‘Rey, _you_ look,’ Finn said, and stopped. He was staring at her like he’d only just discovered her, which was ridiculous. To be fair, though, he’d been giving her that look since the day they met. ‘You look _wonderful_ ,’ he said. 

‘I feel pretty wonderful,’ Rey said in return, her voice wobbling a little as Poe shifted underneath her so that he could get his tongue properly on her clit. 

‘Can I kiss you?’ Finn asked. Rey hesitated only for a second before saying yes to that. Finn scrambled to kneel next to her, wrapped his hands around her face, and kissed her. Very thoroughly. 

It wasn’t like Rey hadn’t _considered_ kissing Finn. It was just that, last time she’d thought about that, she’d answered her own question with ‘but I have to get back to Jakku’. Starkiller Base had been no place for kissing anyone, and Finn hadn’t come to find her because of kissing anyway. Then he was unconscious, and by the time she got back to D’Qar he was happily debauching half the base. There was no way she could keep up with that. She’d found Poe, instead. Poe who loved flying, and never turned down any challenge she set him, and that was fine. That was great. Poe was a great boyfriend. She didn’t _want_ Finn for a boyfriend and he probably didn’t want her for a girlfriend. 

But he was very, very good at kissing, all the same.

Poe’s mouth went still against her, and she broke away from Finn to look down. He was staring at them, eyes wide. She hadn’t, she realised, checked how he’d feel about her kissing Finn.

Finn must have realised the same thing, because he straightened up a little. He kept one arm around her, though.

‘Poe,’ he said, ‘if you want to talk about this, let go of the headboard and we’ll talk.’ Poe didn’t let go. ‘Okay then,’ Finn said. ‘I think you had a task to be doing?’

Poe rumbled something low and incomprehensible against her, flattening his tongue out against her clit and dragging it up until she gasped. 

‘I’ll take that as a yes,’ Finn said, and kissed Rey again.

* * *

They ended up in a pile on the bed, Poe sandwiched between Finn and Rey. He had his face in Rey’s collarbone, clinging to her as he came down. Finn thought he might be superfluous, but the first time he tried to roll away, Poe made a forlorn noise in the back of his throat and flailed one hand out to grab at Finn’s arm. 

‘Don’t you dare,’ Rey said, glaring up at Finn. She had both her hands busy, one arm wrapped around Poe’s waist and the other stroking the back of his head, but the look on her face was enough to stop him in his tracks. ‘Come back here and cuddle,’ Rey told him, and he did.

Rey petted Poe’s hair, crooning nonsense, incoherent strings of words about how good he was, how pretty, how much they admired him. Finn snuggled up into Poe’s side and let the words wash over him: he still hadn’t quite got the hang of this, this ritual of praise and affection that some people practiced after a scene. Rey was good at it, he thought. He could do it, if he needed to, but the words always sounded silly in his own mouth. They sounded perfectly sincere in Rey’s.

At some point, Finn realised Rey had included _him_ in the patter of reassurance and affection. He was clever and confident and so good about looking after them both. Rey liked that, Rey loved that about him. Rey felt safe with him. So did Poe, Rey could tell, and she didn’t need to worry about speaking for him because Poe murmured agreement and rubbed his thumb over the pulse point in Finn’s wrist. Finn was wonderful and Poe was grateful and Rey was grateful, and…

It all became rather overwhelming, and Finn buried his face in the soft hair at the back of Poe’s neck and hoped no one minded that he didn’t, couldn’t say anything in return. Poe tucked Finn’s arm closer around him and Rey shifted to petting Finn’s hair as well, hand drifting back and forth from his head to Poe’s.

If you asked him later, Finn wouldn’t have been able to tell you how long they spent like that.

Eventually, he untangled himself from Rey and Poe, casting around for his clothes. He’d done this plenty of times: any scene had to break up eventually. It felt odd, this time, though. He pulled his sweater on over his head, and when he turned around he realised Rey and Poe were both watching him.

‘Are you going?’ Rey asked him. It didn’t sound plaintive: just a genuine question. Then she blinked, and started to sit up. ‘Should I…?’ And she made as if to get out of Poe’s bed.

‘No!’ Finn said, at once. Then, more steadily, ‘No, you stay here.’

‘You could stay here too, buddy,’ Poe said, eyes crinkling up at the corners. He looked more like himself, and that made Finn sure it was okay to leave. 

‘No, I’m okay,’ he said. 

‘Come here first,’ Rey said, sitting up properly and holding out her arms. Finn went as she asked, and folded himself up into a hug. Poe didn’t sit up, but he placed a hand on the small of Finn’s back, warm and steady.

‘Do we say “thank you” here?’ Rey asked him, drawing back a little. ‘Is that how this goes?’

‘I… don’t know,’ Finn admitted. ‘Sometimes?’ The thing was, this was different from his usual scenes. He’d like to say he didn’t know why, but he sort of did. It wasn’t just because Rey and Poe were a couple independent of him, either. He liked his collaborators, mostly. He cared about Jess and Lila and Whraapu and Bastian. Absolutely. But Rey was his _best friend_ and Poe was his first friend.

‘I’m feelin’ pretty grateful right now,’ Poe said, smiling up at him. ‘“Thank you” doesn’t really cover it.’

‘Thank _you_ ,’ Finn said, and he meant it. ‘Both of you.’

‘What for?’ Rey asked, frowning a little. Finn stared at her, trying to figure out if she still, really, after everything, thought he’d done this primarily as a favour to her or Poe. It was, of course it was, he wanted to help. But he also wanted them to _be okay_. Not just okay. Good. Happy. They were happy, now, like he hadn’t seen either of them happy - together or apart - for weeks.

‘For trusting me,’ he said, and that seemed right. Rey dropped her face to his shoulder and let him hold her for a few moments. Poe kept his hand on Finn’s back, and kept watching them both.

‘We could,’ Finn said, and he could hear the hesitance in his own voice. ‘I mean, I’d be happy to do this again. If you wanted.’

Rey drew back, looking over at Poe with a questioning expression, and Finn was suddenly very afraid he’d said the one thing he ought not to have said right here or now.

‘You want to?’ Rey asked him. 

He thought about lying. He thought about presenting it as ‘If you think it would help’.

‘Yes,’ he said, instead. ‘Not… not right away,’ he added, quick on the heels of that admission. He needed time alone, he knew that, and probably time to go off with Lila and Jess or whoever and clear his head. They probably needed time to do whatever it was that boyfriend and girlfriend did that wasn’t sex. ‘Not all the time. And it’s okay if you don’t, it’s fine. But yes, I do want to.’

Rey kept looking at him, eyes wide, and didn’t say anything. Behind her, Poe was smiling.

‘Go on,’ Poe said, ‘say it properly. “I’d like to sleep with you and your boyfriend again, Rey.”’

Bastard, Finn thought. But it wasn’t as if he didn’t deserve that dig, after what they’d put him through.

‘Rey,’ Finn said, feeling his mouth twitch into a smile. ‘Poe. I’d like to have sex with you again. Both of you.’

‘Okay,’ Rey said. ‘Not right away.’

‘And not all the time,’ Poe added. He sounded more amused by this than Rey was. Finn thought about how he’d said he was getting too old for ‘a social life quite that varied’, and decided it wasn’t the first time he’d had a conversation like this.

‘But yes,’ Rey said, glancing over at Poe. ‘We’d like that.’

‘We would _really_ like that,’ Poe said, smiling up at them both.

‘Good,’ Finn said. He stood up, and this time they let him go. ‘That’s good.’ And he let himself out, and went back to the room he shared with Rey. She wasn’t there, but the room felt like her. Finn might have been imagining it, or maybe the room still had the faint warm impression of Rey’s Force signature.

Finn climbed up into his bunk, above the bunk Rey wasn’t sleeping in tonight but would come back to and sleep in again. It was far from the first time he’d been alone, since coming here, but it was still nice. He was alone, but there were people around. There were other people in the rooms next door, and Rey and Poe not too far away, but no one here in this room to wonder why he wasn’t sleeping, or why he was smiling up at the ceiling like a daft fool.

Certainly no one to notice that he’d just had sex, very private sex, sex that maybe no one else would ever find out about, with two people he definitely cared about enough to compromise his loyalty to _anything_ , if it ever came to that.


End file.
